H.L. Mencken Quotes
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.
The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.
Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better papers.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.
The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.
If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.
The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion.
On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.
A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.